The only trait without a significant neuroanatomical relationship, according to the report, was openness/intellect, which researchers said reflects imagination, curiosity, and artistic and intellectual interests.

It's a fact that the evidence has been piling up for decades that from conception through about the age of twelve or fifteen much of the brain is indeed a blank slate, and this time we know more about the molecular and neuroanatomical basis of what is or is not on the slate than we did fifty or sixty years ago.

The million and a half spent on mass spectrometers and proteomics sequencers I can understand, but there are expenses listed for magnetic resonance imaging, neuroanatomical modeling, an entomologist, a grab bag of everything under the sun.

Doctors should dissect the disease as carefully as the tissue, Meyer thought; especially given the state of knowledge about the brain and the difficulty of neuroanatomical research, this was the more fruitful avenue.